Congress' debt monkey: Time for action

"Easier said than done" applies to the vital necessity of bringing the national debt under control. Doing so would require Congress to rein in its insatiable appetite for spending, which largely created the problem.

A warning issued last week by the bipartisan Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform, made up of 34 former legislators and budget officials, has great merit. But unless Congress actually acts to avert the dire consequences of doing nothing that the panel predicts, that warning will be ineffective.

The commission advises against immediate tax hikes to avoid dampening the fragile economic recovery. But it warns that without painful changes by 2012 to keep the debt at a manageable 60 percent of GDP by 2018, investors could lose confidence in the U.S. -- and that would drive down the dollar and force interest rates to rise, threatening Americans' standard of living.

The national debt has ballooned from 41 percent to 53 percent of GDP in just the last year. And without action, it will rise to 85 percent by 2018 and 200 percent by 2038, according to the panel.

Is anyone in Congress listening -- and taking action to keep Americans out of the poorhouse for decades to come?